HN: I’m very interested in your concept regarding visual philosophy. Can you elaborate on this?

AW: While I embrace visual quality and formal visual elements as necessary to a visual work, I believe that the concept underlying the work is foremost. Art is not decoration. It is idea. It is interpretation. It is created from and physically imbued with big ideas and results from a system of beliefs however idiosyncratic the mix of ideas may be in a particular work. Existentialism, Transcendentalism, a contemporary and somewhat ironic take on the current climate and society now–material culture, pop culture, psychology and gender–are all part of the visual philosophy of my work. I am a visual philosopher. I think and create. I respond to history and to the time in which I live.

HN: I am very intrigued by the juxtaposition of different techniques in your work. Can you explain this dichotomy?

AW: I have been interested in creating tension in my work since my Chicago days as a graduate student. There was tension in my paintings on shower curtains rather than traditional canvases. I have always wanted to challenge tradition while also looking at tradition and continuing it anew. My diptychs, that contrast the vernacular fabric with a more personal oil, speak about the whole self–the individual in society, the emotional and intellectual aspects of a person and as Donald Kuspit says... “the divided self.” I don’t want painting to be precious. I want it to be relevant to today. If the personal is to be considered relevant and profound, it must be of our time, hence the dichotomy.

Excerpt from the exhibition catalogue Alison Weld: The Figurative Impulse in Abstraction, Rider University, 2006

Harry I. Naar is Professor of Fine Arts and Gallery Director, Rider University